Being given an extensive run at the NFT as part of an Ingrid Bergman season, Notorious was Hitchcock's second collaboration with both Bergman and Cary Grant, and one of his subtlest, cruellest, most complex movies, a thriller charged with suspense and erotic tension yet devoid of on-screen violence. The plot turns on a woman manipulated into an exploitative sexual situation for patriotic reasons (FBI agent Grant pushes traitor's daughter Bergman into a relationship with Nazi agent Claude Rains in post-Second World War Rio). It has since been reworked in Le Carré's The Little Drummer Girl, Costa-Gavras's Betrayed and Mission: Impossible II.

We now recognise tropes, themes and narrative devices that recur in the Master's oeuvre: the crucial movements up and down staircases; inanimate objects taking on fateful identities of their own; the grotesque mother; a moral exchange between hero and villain. Watching the film today, we look at Rains lusting after Bergman in Casablanca before it, and to Grant deceiving Bergman for less honourable reasons in Indiscreet after her return to the Hollywood fold. Even Hitchcock's signature appearance ties in neatly with crucial developments in the plot.